


Waterfront

by xylodemon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:17:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beyond the Wall the seas are choppy and rough, the water nearly black as it roils between the heavy, floating floes, as it crashes and churns into the sharp rocks that guard the coastline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waterfront

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first round of [Tag, Your Ship](http://gameofships.livejournal.com/28962.html) at [](http://gameofships.livejournal.com/profile)[**gameofships**](http://gameofships.livejournal.com/) and this photo prompt:
> 
>  

Val has seen the ocean before, several times, but it had not been like this. Beyond the Wall the seas are choppy and rough, the water nearly black as it roils between the heavy, floating floes, as it crashes and churns into the sharp rocks that guard the coastline. Here it is calmer, and a shade of blue-green so clear and bright it almost hurts Val's eyes; the waves roll in easily, white foam and slow curves, licking at the shore with a measured, muted hum, leaving a trail of sticks and shells and pebbles in their wake. 

She moves further down the beach, closer to Jon and the water, picking a careful path with her skirts gathered in one hand, unused to the way the sand shifts and gives under her feet. Jon pauses beside a thick wreckage of wood half-buried in the sand, broken timbers reaching up like a row of cracked ribs, and Val frowns at it curiously, nudging it with the toe of her shoe.

"One of the king's ships," Jon says, his voice soft and fond at once. He loves Stannis well, even if Val does not, would not have taken Winterfell after the Northern wars were finished if Stannis had not asked -- asked as Jon's friend, rather than commanded as Jon's king. "Most of them burned, but a few broke up on Tyrion's chain and washed up on the beach."

"This was a ship?" Val asks, thinking of the fat-bellied galleys anchored on the other side of the castle, all towering masts and snapping sails, huge and clumsy compared to the skin-and-pole canoes the smugglers from Skagos use to slip past Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. "I should think it would be larger."

"It probably was, once. The smallfolk build their houses with anything they can find."

Val turns back toward the city, studying the rough line of the fishing village, a warren of hovels and shacks crouched in the long shadow of the Red Keep, climbing up the sheer face of its outer walls like a squalid, crumbling vine. It's another thing Val finds oddly foreign, the way southron kneelers huddle together, live in one another's pockets. Free-folk villages are built with room to breathe and grow; even the town outside Winterfell is more familiar, a series of squat stone buildings with enough space to walk between them.

"We should start back," Jon says, sliding his hand down her arm, curling her fingers inside his. "The king promised to see me again before supper."

Jon heads up to the king's solar with his back straight and his shoulders set, returns to their chambers late into the evening with a tight mouth and a furrow between his brows. "He's as stubborn as ever," he complains, once he removes his boots and props his feet before the fire. He frowns out the window, holding a cup of spiced wine at his knee. "The Others are finished, but there are still wildings beyond the Wall. There are giants and shadowcats and bears." Frustration bleeds into his voice, thin and sharp, but he sighs when Val rests her hand at the back of his neck, relaxes into his chair. He'll get his way in the end, just as he always does; Stannis is as fond of Jon as Jon is of him, even if he is less able to show it.

He spends three days with Stannis, bargaining for enough gold and workers to repair Winterfell, for enough men and weapons to garrison the gutted forces at the Wall, and Val passes that time at the beach, watching the sunlight glint off the sweep of the waves, letting the water lap softly at her feet, wet sand pushing between her toes. She collects a few delicate, peach-and-white shells, keeps a nearly heart-shaped pebble, dark grey and veined with pink, and she finds the corpse of another ship, eats an apple in its shade as crab scuttles up what's left of the wood. The first days he brings one of the household guard, slow and awkward in his boiled leather and steel as he trudges over the dunes, but the second and third day she goes out alone, sneaking past Jon's men and making vague excuses to Selyse's ladies.

"It isn't proper," Jon says, when she returns well after the sun has set, her hair a wild tangle and her skirts damp past her ankles, "and the city still isn't safe."

"I can take care of myself."

"The queen was expecting you for supper."

Val glances at the invitation, still waiting on the table, written on parchment so thin she can almost see through it. The queen and her ladies have been kind enough, in a stiff and formal way, but Val finds their conversations dragging and dull, full of their husbands and children and their strange red god, and while she sews well enough to make a new dress or mend Jon's cloaks, she doesn't have the patience for the fine embroidery they favor, stitching squares of linen with tiny flowers or thin lines of scrollwork.

"You should've married a kneeler," she says finally. She has sand under her fingernails, can still taste the salt air on her lips. "If you wanted a woman who will sit behind stone walls all day, then--"

"That's not what I meant," he says, pulling her into his arms. He kisses her, his mouth slow and soft and tasting like an apology, and she sighs into it despite the anger still bristling under her skin, lets her fingers curl into the collar of his doublet. She loves him, but she isn't sure she will ever understand him. He is a free man in his heart, she can see it in the way he deals with his men and the way he swings his sword, in the reckless way he fucks her sometimes, the rough snap of his hips and his open mouth against her neck, his hand twisting into her hair or resting at the hollow of her throat, but he has buried it too deeply, is afraid to let himself live the way men should.

She returns to the beach in the morning; a cluster of fishing boats are setting out for the day, and she watches them bob toward the horizon, growing smaller and more distant, until they're just black flecks on the surface of the water. It's colder today, heavy clouds gathering north and west, promising rain, and Val smiles as gust of wind skirts down the coastline, a welcome relief from the strange southron heat. The maesters insist it is autumn, but Val has never known an autumn without snow.

"I thought you might be here again," Jon says, cresting a slow rise in the sand. "I'm worried you think to leave me for a fisherman." He laughs then, but uncertainty creeps into the edges of his voice; she knows he's still uncomfortable with his new life, with everything he never thought he'd have.

"Fishermen smell of fish," she says, wrinkling her nose. She tucks her arm through his and pulls him close. "Did your king finally bend the knee?" 

"Not quite," Jon says, laughing again. "He agreed to most of what I asked for, which is far more than I had hoped." A seagull wheels across the sky; he watches it for a moment, then turns back to her, pressing a kiss to her temple. "We can leave for Winterfell on the morrow, unless you -- I can ask the king if we can stay a few more days."

_The Others take Stannis,_ she almost says, but does not, because Jon would not appreciate it, because the Others almost _did_ take Stannis. His left arm carries a long burn from wrist to elbow, a mottled stretch of skin Jon blames on himself because he hadn't been there to prevent it, just as he blames himself for the still-crooked fingers on Samwell's right hand, the knife scar on Val's side.

"We can stay or go, whatever you wish," she says, her mouth curving with a smile. "But if you want me to return to the castle just now, you will have to catch me."

She drops her shoes and hikes up her skirts, and Jon laughs as he chases her into the water.


End file.
